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An anonymous reader writes "Pioneer and veteran of genomics Professor John Sulston is extremely concerned about the patent applications on the first synthetic life-form. The patents were filed by the Venter Institute following the announcement of the first life-form to have a synthetic genome. Sulston claims the patent is excessively broad and would stifle research and development in the field by creating an effective monopoly on synthetic life and related molecular techniques. Prof. Sulston had previously locked horns ten years ago with Dr. Craig Venter over intellectual property issues surrounding the human genome project. Fortunately, Sulston won the last round and the HGP is freely accessible — Venter had wanted to charge for access, just as he now wishes to make 'synthetic life' proprietary."

It's the "gene patent pool", or "GPP". Soon to offer you your very own "Gene Patent License", or "GPL", so you can "open source" yourself. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Provided, of course, that you agree to these teensy weensy conditions in the fine print, and pay our nominal licensing fee...

Venter Institute have been working on this for 15 years. Allowing them to get a temporary monopoly to use or licence elements of the fruit of their R&D so they can get a return on their investment is exactly what the patent system was intended for.

Sometimes the depth of human greed astonishes me. This is something which, if openly available to the right people and if they were allowed to work on/improve on it as they saw fit, could literally change almost everything.

Keeping it locked behind a patent is greed at its worst (or finest, depending on which side you are on.) I'm all for getting paid for your ideas, but some things (like, oh I don't know, synthetic life) should belong to the entire human race, not Joe McBob who can only see lawsuits and dollar signs.

The alternative is also failing pretty miserably too, just less dramatically and in much slower motion. Perhaps there is a solution that doesn't require existing on either extreme. Somewhere between Marx and Rand (both ideological nutjobs, who had a couple of salvageable points) there might be a proper solution. It will never happen because the rich and powerful like the status quo in either scenario, and normal people never matter.

I personally think unmitigated, and consequence free greed, like that whi

Of course, the thousands of people who spent the prior 50 years developing the *methodologies* that he used, will be locked out of synthetic life until their children are middle aged. Despite romantic ideas, invention is not a solitary operation. He may have been the first to the finish line using "shitloads of money," but patents will do nothing but slow down progress. The world will start working with synthetic life in a quarter century, whereas without Venter and patents, the we would have synthetic life in <5 (at the rate of progress in molecular biology).

The problem is that without the possibility of patenting it, then Venter wouldn't have done the research in the first place, and nothing would be changed. The backers of Venter must have spend millions of dollars on this research. They wouldn't do that without a reasonable chance of a return.

Of course if it had instead been the work of public sector money, such as by a government funded university, then I'd agree it should be given openly to all.

I propose a viewpoint. As opposed to keeping discussion specific to individual patents or details of a certain case, we should talk about nuking the whole patent system entirely. It is a net loss. It is an archaic system based on naíve economic ideas. It is time to euthanize it.

That's the thing though...if people applied for patents that were limited in scope and describe only their invention, the system would be working exactly as it was intended to. Unfortunately, greed (on applicant's part) and complacency (on the USPTO's part) prevent this.

It's not the patent system that is broken. It's the people who use it that are broken. You can't fault the USPTO when people submit insanely broad patents that have nearly nothing to do with their actual invention. (You can, of course, blame the USPTO when they actually GRANT those patents, but that's a different conversation)

It's not the patent system that is broken. It's the people who use it that are broken.

Isn't that the basis of "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument? If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken. Because you just can't expect people to naturally play nice, and not game the system.

With regard to your earlier post, eliminating patents would screw over the honest patent appliers. Status quo screws over everyone.

Isn't that the basis of "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument? If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken.

So you blame a system as being broken when it's the people that do the breaking? That doesn't make any sense.

That's like saying cars are a flawed method of transportation because most people drive like assholes. That isn't the car's fault, it's the asshole's fault.

So you blame a system as being broken when it's the people that do the breaking?

Not quite, although I can see where you got that from. What I am saying is that a system open to blatant corruption is a broken system. We can obviously differ on definitions of "blatant corruption." My opinion, the patent system is open to "blatant corruption" to the extreme. Ergo, the patent system is broken.

Excellent, car analogies. I am not arguing the theory of patents with you, only the implementation. If there were no rules on roads regarding direction of flow, stop signs/lights, speed, etc,

Quite the contrary, there are some areas that desparately need the patent system to continue and flourish. The medical industry in general, and the pharmaceutical industry specifically are a good example. R&D is extremely expensive and depends on the windfall of blockbuster drugs to sustain it. Drugs and medical devices are extrodinarily expensive to develop, but fairly easy to replicate. 20 years isn't that big of a price to pay.

Quite the contrary, there are some areas that desparately need the patent system to continue and flourish. The medical industry in general, and the pharmaceutical industry specifically are a good example. R&D is extremely expensive and depends on the windfall of blockbuster drugs to sustain it. Drugs and medical devices are extrodinarily expensive to develop, but fairly easy to replicate. 20 years isn't that big of a price to pay.

You're misinformed. More than half of the medical research money comes f

Having a good idea is usually common, actually carrying it to fruition is a lot harder. I think that your viewpoint that we need patents to protect solitary inventors from a hypothetical scenario of a greedy corporation duplicating someone's idea well enough, is flawed. Sure, it's possible that it has happened or would happen to people, but we should be optimizing for the common case. Polihistors are a thing of the past, solitary invention is exceedingly rare. Inventions are evolutionary in the sense that i

Then I apologise for not being clear enough. What I ment to say isn't "screw the little guy", but rather that the little guy already has lots of options to turn a profit from inventing something, without the artificial monopoly of a patent system. His ideas are worth a lot without a protection of the patent system and let me just add that I take issue with you saying "actually worth", because currently the inventor receives massive subsidies from the taxpayer in the form of the patent system. Those subsidie

Someone mentioned that one of the original ideas behind the patent was not to "protect the little guy" but to allow trade secrets to be revealed without potential loss to the company who has them. Similar concept, of course, just on a grander scale. Trade secrets could stifle innovation -- at least if the idea is out there, people can license it and invent off of it.

I mean, look at the formula for Coca Cola. How many great new inventions could have been created had the details of that syrupy goodness bee

Reality: Average Joe invents something. Average Joe has the foresight to patent it. Corporation X sees invention and mass-produces it for less than Average Joe can. Average Joe sues Corporation X, but is told that his estimated legal costs for the case will be $1,500,000 once they have done stalling and playing games. Corporation X offers to buy Joe's patent for a pitance, and Joe relctantly agrees.

Except patents were designed to protect specific objects, tools, and machines with specific functions--like the iPhone, Droid, cotton gin, etc. not fundamental biochemical interactions. If they're building a specific, non-cognizant organism for a specific purpose, ok; if they're going after the whole concept of synthetic life, no.

If you were first to invent steel, then of course you would have earned yourself a limited time monopoly to use or license it. You benefit from that time limited monopoly. The world benefits from you letting them know the secret of this new wonder metal.

Of course that particular invention was long since made public and isn't now patentable.

The world benefits from you letting them know the secret of this new wonder metal.

Or, more precisely, from not letting them know the secret, since that's what patents boil down to in practice. People theoretically 'know the secret', but they are forbidden from practicing it under pain of having men with suits and guns have stern conversations with them in concrete rooms.

So patents are actually about deliberately slowing the improvement of the world until they expire, and deliberately using that regulated vacuum of innovation to create commercial profit - in the absence of what the market

The moral of this story: if you create an honest creation to use, rather than to sell - assuming it's a creation which is beneficial to all and not something which helps the wielder while harming others (like say a weapon or a secret process which only gives your business 'competitive advantage' in a zero-sum market) - then you will lose nothing by not patenting or copyrighting it but will in fact gain hugely, as your creation will be distributed widely, make the world more efficient, spark new and better i

But much of our social infrastructure views creativity as something you do primarily to sell to others, or get advantage over others. And as long as we think in that way, we'll always be threatened by creativity happening elsewhere, and therefore will seek to control and stamp out creativity in others - and view copying as a form of theft.

Spoken like someone who has never had to provide for himself by earning a living.

Or, more precisely, from not letting them know the secret, since that's what patents boil down to in practice. People theoretically 'know the secret', but they are forbidden from practicing it under pain of having men with suits and guns have stern conversations with them in concrete rooms.

A statement of the complete opposite of the truth. Before patents, inventors would seek to profit from their inventions by keeping them secret. For example in the steel hypothetical, the inventor would keep the secret of

Venter Institute have been working on this for 15 years. Allowing them to get a temporary monopoly to use or licence elements of the fruit of their R&D so they can get a return on their investment is exactly what the patent system was intended for.

No, the intent of the system is clearly written in the United States Constitution, and was to advance the arts and sciences. I.e. a consideration for the [b]people[/b], not the inventor.

The time limitations on patents and copyrights were deliberately kept short in order to force the inventor or artist to create new work instead of living on the profits reaped from old works.

You make it sound as if it was one sided. For the people, not the inventor. That of course can;t be true because the onus is on the inventor to apply for the patent. He would not do so if he didn't benefit from the system.

The truth is it was always intended to be a balance - for inventors to reveal their secrets in exchange for that limited time monopoly. Both people and inventor were intended to benefit from the arrangement.

But the means is a most unnatural and extremely wasteful and unnecessarily restrictive monopoly, granted and upheld solely by government fiat and force, paid for by our tax dollars. Monopolies are totally unacceptable. Takes a lot of force and expense to make the system function at all. And there is an endless line of scoundrels trying to take advantage of the system's huge uncertainties to argue for having the government cover far mor

10 Yep, I think we can all safely say that The Genome is the mother of all Prior Art!2030 P.S.40 No, I didn't read the patent application, so I don't really know how broad their application is and if the summery doesn't stretch the truth a bit in Prof. Sulston's direction. Assuming the summery is correct - Go To 10

Sexual reproduction has a limited input genome. Nature cannot create anything that does not already exist in the parents, save deviation due to mutation. The idea behind synthetic life is that you can produce any genome and therefore create lifeforms which could not occur naturally. The issue is whether or not you can patent a specific genome so that others cannot use it freely.

Bacterial conjugation is often incorrectly regarded as the bacterial equivalent of sexual reproduction or mating. Loosely, and misleadingly, it can be considered to be a limited bacterial version of sex, since it involves some genetic exchange.

While you are correct that bacteria have more advanced mechanisms than just binary fission, it is not considered sexual reproduction. In sexual reproduction you have 2 genomes (with more or less the same genes) from 2 different individuals, thus allowing the propagation of (hopefully) useful mutations and allowing greater diversity in the species.In bacterial conjugation, OTOH, one bacteria has a beneficial gene (AKA plasmid) that is copied and transferred to another bacteria that does not have it. This mec

Yeah just ignore all that stuff about transduction, transformation and conjugation.

You are told bacteria reproduce asexually in high school. However when you take a university microbiology course you learn that different bacteria can share genetic material, even across species (leading to all the antibiotic resistance we see today). While it might not look like sex to mammals, the exchange and recombination of genetic material through mechanisms other than meiosis IS sexual reproduction, since offspring inh

I wasn't ignoring it, I just wasn't considering it sexual reproduction. Sure it has the same end result but as far as I am aware it is two independent processes (horizontal transfer and asexual reproduction). If together they are considered sexual reproduction then fine.

I did Biology up to "Higher" level. I have no idea what your local equivalent would be (I don't even know where you are) but it ends 1 year before high school does in Scotland (you do it in 5th year, leave in 6th year...although you CAN leav

Despite its name, the sex pilus is not used for sexual reproduction, and cannot be equated with a penis, although such comparisons are often used to ease understanding.

Transfer of genetic material does not constitute sex. There is no reproduction involved in that process. Any following asexual reproduction is simply preceded by that process which changes the parent cell - the reproduction is in now way effected by the transferal (other than the fact that it increases the cell size, so may speed up the separation). There is no male or female cell, rather a donor and recipient.

Craig Venter's dream is to use the tools of science to create the world's first true patent troll. Not a mere shell corporation; but a living, breathing creature, equal parts mythological tusks and contemporary instinct for ruthless litigation. Natural habitat? The Texas rocket-dockets...

What makes this spookily accurate is the focus on global "intellectual property" enforcement regimes, so that "we can protect our interests abroad". Raw nationalist piracy on a scale that makes pillaging the Plate Fleet look like a 10 cent raid on a Take A Penny, Leave a Penny box.

Good gravy, and wait until the Chinese get in on the act. Instead of ignoring "IP" rights and actually making things - hah, naive fools - imagine a billion Chinese patent trolls filing th

I'm not so worried about this. Monsanto already showed exceptional responsibility with their GM patents on 99.5% of the crops our food, clothes, textiles, and medicines come from. Let's take it to the next step.

@Aphoxema: my guess is you are a Monsanto employee because if there's one company being terribly irresponsible with their patents on LIFE (which I can think should be forbidden), it would be Monsanto.Please watch the documentary "Food Inc." and you'll see the true face of this horrible company.

I'm talking:- seeds with suicide gens in them so farmers can only use them once- plants that grow only once and do not provide seeds at all, so they have to be bought again at Monsanto- 70 Monsanto employees scouring

It's like a company that tries to patent an object that has four wheels, a steering wheel, a wind shield and an engine.

Been done before [slashdot.org]. Fortunately the saving grace in that case was that the patent was on a specific type of engine, and thus ruled inapplicable to most of the cars being made at the time. On a more general note, this is why it's important that patents be for a specific implementation of an idea. If someone can tweak your idea to make it better, they have to be able to do so without runnin

The Beatles would have problems with lots and lots of prior art in that case, where this isn't the case. If you want a music analogy, I'd say this is more like Les Paul patenting all music made with electrically amplified instruments.

BTW, search uspto.gov for patents listing "venter, j craig" as an inventor & then do the same for "collins, francis" (head of the public HGP). Guess who has more patents?

You have to be careful with searches like this. There is such a thing as a defensive patent, where the patenter patents an idea to keep other people from patenting it and closing it off. I don't think I've ever used the same word in a sentence as much as in that one. For the sake of brevity you can read it as "patenter patents patent